When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
Some pipes carry a lid before they carry a name. This one has both: a hinged metal windcap over the bowl, and a shank stamped Bruyere Garantie. After all these decades, it has never been smoked.
The shank reads BRUYERE GARANTIE. The pipe is German-made, a smooth-finished bent traditional shape, fitted with a metal windcap over the rim and a bakelite stem. There is no filter.
Bowl: briar
Stem: bakelite
Filter: none
Stamped: \"Bruyere Garantie\"
Bruyere is French for briar; garantie means guaranteed. Stamping that assurance directly onto the shank was a common practice among continental pipe workshops, because briar substitution was a real concern in the trade for much of the twentieth century. Briar burl was prized for its heat resistance and neutral taste under fire, and cheaper composition blocks or lesser woods were sometimes passed off in the lower end of the market. A shank stamped Bruyere Garantie was the maker telling the buyer, in plain language, that the bowl in his hand was the genuine article. No maker\'s name accompanies the phrase on this pipe, and none is claimed here.
THE MARKS
- Stamped \"Bruyere Garantie\" on the shank
The bowl bends downward from the shank in a continuous curve, the classic profile of a bent traditional shape: the bit sits level in the mouth without the jaw compensating for an upward-canted chamber, and the pipe can be held loosely between the teeth for long stretches without fatigue. The bakelite stem is fitted to a shank with no visible mounting ring between wood and vulcanite-family material; bakelite was a common stem material before and alongside vulcanite in the European trade, harder and less prone to softening in heat than some early plastics, though it oxidizes and can green with age like its rubber-compound cousins.
The metal windcap is the pipe\'s most distinctive fitting. It sits over the bowl\'s rim and is lifted to load and light the tobacco, then closed down over the burning chamber. Closed, it shields the ember from a crosswind and from rain, so the pipe can be carried lit and smoked outdoors in conditions that would put an open bowl out - a working man\'s fitting, built for use rather than the mantelpiece. Windcaps of this kind add real manufacturing cost over an open rim, and a maker specified one only for a pipe meant to go outside.
The finish is smooth, not sandblasted or rusticated, which leaves the surface of the wood bare beneath the wax rather than textured or stained dark to hide it. Finish and grain pattern are best judged from the photographs.
Condition: unsmoked. The chamber is bare and shows no cake, no scorching, and no darkening at the rim from use. This is consistent with a pipe that has sat unfired for decades rather than one lightly smoked and cleaned.
THE MEASUREMENTS
- Length: 123.0mm (4.8 in)
- Bowl height: 46.0mm (1.8 in)
- Bowl width: 35.0mm (1.4 in)
- Chamber diameter: 20.0mm (0.8 in)
- Chamber depth: 32.0mm (1.3 in)
- Weight: 49.0g
Ships from the Faridunhill / Pipe Collectors Encyclopedia archive. Worldwide shipping and professional sanitation on every estate pipe.
SKU: 449
